Voices, trauma, lifehttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com
A blog by Simon McCarthy-JonesSat, 09 Dec 2017 00:01:49 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngVoices, trauma, lifehttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com
Living deliberately in the age of social networking siteshttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/living-deliberately-in-the-age-of-social-networking-sites/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/living-deliberately-in-the-age-of-social-networking-sites/#respondFri, 08 Dec 2017 23:51:39 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=684]]>Here’s a new blog/article from me, originally published in The Conversation.

We tend to focus on the potential for voice-hearing to arise from events that happened in the country from which the person is fleeing . Yet this should not obscure a potential role for events that happen to them in the country to which they flee.

“Incidence rates [of psychosis] are greatest in those immigrants who are living in neighborhoods in which they form a clear minority, suggesting that discrimination, experiences of social defeat and powerlessness, and/or lack of social support may be important in conferring risk of illness.”

Indeed, the report I just read highlights that the stresses of the asylum seeking process in the ostensibly safe country a person flees to, may also lead to hearing voices.

What is also notable about this report is that they quote a psychologist describing voice-hearing in this context as a normal reaction to a frightening situation. This portrays hearing voices not as a sign of madness, but a manifestation of fear.

In the report, this happens in the case of Dilraj.

Dilraj’s story

Dilraj was a 30-year-old Indian asylum seeker referred to a center for victims of torture in Greece. His doctor said he had “a clear case of post-traumatic stress disorder.” Dilraj was living alone in hotel room in an old building used to house asylum seekers.

He felt socially isolated and was scared to leave his home as he didn’t know many other members of the Sikh community. Due to personal financial reasons, he was forced to move out of his small hotel room.

Put into shared accommodation, he accused his roommate from Pakistan of spying on him. Voices and paranoia began, and he was hospitalized as a result.

Many of the voices he heard were those of authority figures, including officials in Greece. The authors note that Dilraj seemed to be as scared of the Greek authorities as he was of the people who tortured him in his country of origin. He was unsure of whether or not asylum would be granted to him, and this made him even more afraid.

Given his situation, it is not a puzzle why the voices said what they did. One voice said: “You will be homeless you will be homeless.” Another said: “They will not believe you, they will send you back to India.”

His psychologist stated “What he hears is normal, it’s his fear”

Safety and mental health

This situation is unlikely to be limited to PTSD. People with other diagnoses, such as schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder (and even some with no psychiatric diagnosis), may also have their voices rooted in their fears.

For example, imagine you are in the woods and hear a twig snap behind you. You may panic and think it is a bear. If you turn out to be mistaken (a ‘false positive’), you may feel a bit foolish as a result. But if you had just carried on walking, assuming it wasn’t a bear, when it actually was (a ‘false negative’), then the cost of your mistake would be much greater.

Evolution is prejudiced – it favours those who don’t get eaten – and as a result we have a threat detection system that is going to result in a lot of false positives. The hypervigilance theory of voice-hearing proposes this contribute to people’s tendency to hear threatening voices even when they are not actually there.

More generally, we may ask how many people’s mental health could be facilitated simply by making them feel safer?

Many, it would appear. Indeed, perceived safety has often been linked to mental health, such as in the manner below (taken from this paper):

However, as usual, the answer may not be as straightforward as one imagines. One study (referenced here, but which I can’t track down) reported that people suffering from psychosis who lived in areas with high perceived community safety actually had higher hospital readmission rates. This was proposed to be because of low community tolerance of unusual behaviour.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Dilraj’s experiences of the asylum system in Greece had a negative effect on his mental health.

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/11/02/what-he-hears-is-normal-its-his-fear/feed/2smccarthyjonesStimulating voiceshttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/stimulating-voices/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/stimulating-voices/#respondWed, 30 Aug 2017 08:42:48 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=617]]>A new blog from me entitled: “Brain stimulation can boost creativity – but could it also help you hear inspirational voices?”

It ranges from neurostimulation and voice-hearing to Terence McKenna and Tulpamancy, Hilary Mantel and the Air Force.

I hope you find it stimulating.

SMJ

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/stimulating-voices/feed/0smccarthyjonesThe end of the concept of schizophreniahttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/the-end-of-the-concept-of-schizophrenia/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/the-end-of-the-concept-of-schizophrenia/#respondSat, 26 Aug 2017 13:38:02 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=612]]>A new blog from me entitled: “The concept of schizophrenia is coming to an end – here’s why“.

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/the-end-of-the-concept-of-schizophrenia/feed/0smccarthyjonesIs Shame Hallucinogenic?https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/is-shame-hallucinogenic/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/08/09/is-shame-hallucinogenic/#commentsWed, 09 Aug 2017 17:22:09 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=610]]>I published a new paper this month about whether shame has the potential to be hallucinogenic.

The paper is Open Access and hence free to read, so if you’re interested, here’s the link:

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/bereavement-hallucinations/feed/1smccarthyjonesTwo simple questions that have changed the way people hear inner voiceshttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/two-simple-questions-that-have-changed-the-way-people-hear-inner-voices/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/two-simple-questions-that-have-changed-the-way-people-hear-inner-voices/#respondSun, 07 May 2017 14:19:23 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=604]]>A new blog from me entitled “Two simple questions that have changed the way people hear inner voices“.

This discusses how the Maastricht Interview may be able to help some people better understand the voices they hear.

SMJ

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/two-simple-questions-that-have-changed-the-way-people-hear-inner-voices/feed/0smccarthyjonesMy blog on the Huffington Posthttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/my-blog-on-the-huffington-post/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/my-blog-on-the-huffington-post/#respondTue, 25 Apr 2017 09:05:16 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=599]]>A blog I wrote on voice-hearing for the Huffington Post is one of their ‘Featured Blog Posts‘ in their Science section this morning, which is nice.

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/my-blog-on-the-huffington-post/feed/0smccarthyjonesTaking back the brain: Trialling neurofeedback for voice-hearinghttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/taking-back-the-brain-trialling-neurofeedback-for-voice-hearing/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/taking-back-the-brain-trialling-neurofeedback-for-voice-hearing/#commentsSun, 09 Apr 2017 11:26:14 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=594Continue reading Taking back the brain: Trialling neurofeedback for voice-hearing]]>Hearing voices (also referred to as ‘auditory verbal hallucinations’) need not be associated with problems. However, for a number of people, they are. Problems are particularly likely to arise if the voices are frequent, say negative things, and if the person has no control over them.

Different people want differ ways to cope with their voices, as our research has previously found. For some, medication may be the solution. For others, approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy or the Hearing Voices Movement’s Maastricht Interview may provide answers and peace.

Another potential way of coping is neurofeedback.

Neurofeedback works by showing people their brain activity in real-time, and then training them to manipulate this. It allows you to control your own brain.

I have just received some funding from the US-based Brain & Behaviour Research Foundation to test whether EEG-based neurofeedback can help people distressed by voice-hearing. My thanks go to them and to their donors for making this research possible.

The trial will be done in collaboration with Dr Michael Keane at the Dublin-based neurofeedback clinic, Actualise.

Work will start towards the end of 2017, when I will be looking to recruit a post-doc to work on this trial with me.

Hopefully this approach will prove effective and give people who are distressed by their voices another therapeutic option to choose from.

More soon.

SMJ

]]>https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/09/taking-back-the-brain-trialling-neurofeedback-for-voice-hearing/feed/1smccarthyjonesHow to get YouTube videos to start and stop at a specific timehttps://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/how-to-get-youtube-videos-to-start-and-stop-at-a-specific-time/
https://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/how-to-get-youtube-videos-to-start-and-stop-at-a-specific-time/#commentsFri, 07 Apr 2017 00:28:52 +0000http://simonmccarthyjones.wordpress.com/?p=574Continue reading How to get YouTube videos to start and stop at a specific time]]>I was trying to insert a Youtube video into one of my blogs recently.

I didn’t want the whole video to play when someone clicked on it, but just a small portion that was relevant to the point I wanted to make.

There are on-line videos that tell you how to do this, but these didn’t work for me.

Here’s what worked for me.

Go to your video on You-tube and click on the ‘share’ button (as shown below)

2. Click on the Embed option and copy the link that appears (in blue below)

3. Switch from the ‘visual’ view on WordPress to the ‘text’ view

4. Paste in the code from YouTube in the appropriate place, which may look something like this in the ‘text’ view:

5. Lets say you want the clip to start 72 seconds in, and to end 88 seconds in. To do this, add in the following text fragment ?start=72&end=88 at the end of the YouTube video name (in this case its name is qkj5fAOyufQ). In this example, the revised text will now look as follows:

Now, when you switch back from the ‘Text’ view into the ‘Visual’ view in WordPress, you should see your video, and when you click on it, it should play for the time you wanted.